Article V More Than Ever

Article V Blog ^ | July 16th 2016 | Rodney Dodsworth

[Jacquerie]

Our revolutionary Constitution violated two accepted truths of 18th century political science: stable republics require small territories, and external commerce was detrimental to republics.

As to the first, any government that depends on the direct or indirect participation of the people requires a certain commonality in traditions, religion, and culture. This was thought possible only in city-states or across small territories. Yet, not only history, but our experience after 1776 had shown that even small republics had to guard against majoritarian tyranny. All forms of direct or indirect democracies were prone to the rise of factions that would put their interests ahead of the common good. State governments under the Articles of Confederation largely exemplified this troubling pathology.

Second, at our founding, commerce was regarded as debasing. Its promotion spurred inequality, avarice, selfishness, vanity and undue consumption in the pursuit of luxury. The resulting tensions and suspicions in a society of otherwise equals promoted the rise of factional interests opposed to the common good.

James Madison and our Framers rejected both of these accepted truths. In so doing, they redefined republicanism.

To combat the destructive effect of existing factions that our early state governments could not arrest, our Constitution set up a complex system of divided powers and checks among institutions designed to implement the natural functions of any government: legislative, executive and judicial. Only the House of Representatives was popularly derived. The rest of the government was either federal in nature (Senate, Electoral College, and Article V), or even further isolated from the people through the judicial nomination and appointment process. Taken all together, our 1787 Constitution was purposely anti-democratic.

To thwart the formation of factional interests, Madison theorized that an extended commercial republic would encourage the rise of so many diverse interests that none could become strong enough to threaten the republic. By replacing divisions over the amount of property with divisions over the kinds of property, the ages-old conflict between rich and poor could be largely overcome.

End.

The security of these guardrails to free government no longer exist. Separation of powers is a distant memory. Instead of working to minimize the corrosion of faction, one political party in particular is devoted to enflaming every possible societal, racial and economic division. Toward what purpose? Their own parasitic power. Our government has become a factional interest of its own. It is willing to destroy that upon which it depends, a healthy republic composed of a civil society attentive to personal industry and devoted to liberty.

We can wish and imagine all we want that our existing Constitution still serves its designed purposes to “. . . establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . . “

But it doesn’t. How much longer shall we fantasize that those who feed from its corruption will reform it? Our Constitution needs improvement.

We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder. Join Convention of States.

Sign the COS Petition.

Hat tip:
Peacock, Anthony A. How to Read the Federalist Papers. Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2010. Book.

[JesusIsLord]

Beware of unintended consequences.

The problem is not our present Constitution but that our government is comprised of people who do not, who will not - adhere to it. Have you looked at the approval rate of the President vs Congress? We live in a nation that elected Obama 2x and would elect him again if he was allowed a 3rd term. How do we fix a corrupt and blind people who do not follow the current Constitution - with a new Constitution? Laws are only as good as the people who obey and enforce them.

[PGalt]

“The security of these guardrails to free government no longer exist. Separation of powers is a distant memory. Instead of working to minimize the corrosion of faction, one political party in particular is devoted to enflaming every possible societal, racial and economic division. Toward what purpose? Their own parasitic power. Our government has become a factional interest of its own. It is willing to destroy that upon which it depends, a healthy republic composed of a civil society attentive to personal industry and devoted to liberty.”

OUTSTANDING post, education, history. Thanks for your work, Jacquerie.

Victims of Lawful Plunder

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.

/Bastiat

[PGalt]

How….?

DEPOPULATE socialist/totalitarians/criminals/conmen/deceivers/liars/losers/scumbags and their enablers from the body politic. DEFUND/DISMANTLE/DESTROY (when necessary) socialist/totalitarian collectives, foreign and domestic.

It’s easy to…

live - free - republic

[nathanbedford]

So far it seems to me that opposition to Article V boils down to about four objections:

1. It won't work -so don't bother trying.

2. It won't work, even if it does work, because "they" will undo it, ignore it, or somehow overrule it, so don't bother trying.

3. It will work, but don't try it because it will work only for the other side.

4. No opinion on whether it will work or will not work, but the Constitution we have is just fine so the solution offered by the Constitution itself in Article V should be ignored in favor of redoubling our efforts and doing more of the same every election cycle because this time we will get different results.

Which category are you in?

#2 seems to fit.

[eartick]

No A5, #TEXIT.

[Jacquerie]

Corruption flows downward, not upward. There is enormous resistance to what is going on. The rise of Trump alone is proof.

The solution is structural change to our governing form. For starters, return the senate to the states and stop relying on the virtue alone of those sent to government.

[Da Bilge Troll]

.

[Ken H]

How could this amendment be cheated =>

The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

[Samurai_Jack]

“Which category are you in?”

while rejecting your characterization of it, I prefer category Four.

If this government will not abide by the constitution and laws that we currently have then how is it that we’re expecting they’ll abide by this new constitution.

Will they not simply redefine it into meaninglessness the way they’ve done with the constitution that we currently have?

We have the same objection to new gun control or Immigration laws. Why would a criminal abide by new gun control or immigration laws if the existing laws are not enforced.

[wita]

I believe corruption travels in both directions. States are equally corrupt as the Fed, and it flows to local govt as well in both directions. Corruption begins with the individual.

[i_robot73]

IOW: I have to see anything become MORE succinct by adding MORE verbiage.

Though, IMO, blame can be placed on the Founders for the lack of enforcement (even they were learned enough to understand govt does not freely recede from the powers it has unlawfully gained). Ultimately, the fallacy lies w/ We the People failing to understand it is *US* that are the final arbiters...and enforcing that knowledge by the occasional letting of blood.

[nathanbedford]

On November 23, 2014, in the wake of that sweet and sour election and long before Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring, I wrote the following vanity which I reproduce here at length (so be warned). We are on the cusp of an opportunity to elect Donald Trump who might prove to be a real game changer, a President in a new mold who might be able to actually change Washington. Even so, he will be gone after eight years and opposing forces will return, he will be fighting mighty forces arrayed against him as described below. To win the battle even he will need the tools which might be provided by Article V. Without structural reforms anything accomplished by Donald Trump can prove as transitory as the accomplishments of Ronald Reagan; with those reforms, he might be able to actually save the Republic.

I reproduce it here to demonstrate why merely electing Republicans alone can no longer suffice to save the Republic, of course that must be done, especially Trump must be elected, but our constitutional structure must be restored and that by constitutional means provided in Article V:

Somewhere, Over The Horizon

Soon, within the lives of most of you, the American dream will slip away.

If we accept that demographics in national presidential elections are increasingly running against Republicans and even more against conservatives, we must assume that the norm will be left-leaning Presidents. Looking beyond the 2014 election and the 2016 election as well, if we assume that cities will dominate statewide elections as demographics continue to run against us, the Senate will increasingly trend left. However, the hold by Republicans and conservatives in the House of Representatives looks to be solid for some years to come, primarily because Republicans dominate state legislatures and draw district lines.

Regardless of the outcome of the 2016 election this demographic disadvantage condemns conservatism to a defensive posture for the foreseeable future, absent some sort of cataclysmic event like slavery and the Civil War or the Great Depression which fundamentally changes party alignment and enables Republicans to regularly gain national power. Absent such a tectonic shift, Democrats will routinely prevail after the 2016 election and its consequences are played out. As conservatives are forced back to the House of Representatives as a defensive citadel, they will try to serve our children and grandchildren by stopping an increasingly aggressive Democrat President in the Obama mold, that is, an executive who imposes power through executive action (and inaction), and bureaucratic lawmaking and adjudication. Conservatives will strive to do that but too many Republicans will not.

In other words, Democrat Presidents will operate where they can be free of the checks and balances invested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives. The House will look in vain to the courts to bring the executive back under the control of the Constitution but that will become hopeless in short order as increasingly leftist Senates confirm increasingly leftist judges. The precedent set by Harry Reid to jigger the rules of the Senate will become irreversibly fixed in favor of Democrats when they ultimately retake the Senate. Over time, perhaps sooner than we would like to think, constitutionalists will find no salvation in the courts. The recent trend in the Supreme Court to overrule Obama's blatant excesses like recess appointments is a trend which will not continue because the court will change with more leftist judges appointed by Democrats and because leftist Presidents will simply become more clever which is to say, more devious.

Government by bureaucracy will accelerate. Even if the House of Representatives can check the creation of new agencies, existing agencies are so ubiquitous, so powerful and so unrestrained that an aggressive President in the Obama mold can simply rule through them. He will build on the precedents being established now by Barack Obama. These agencies have assumed the Article I power to legislate, the Article II power to prosecute, and, worse, the Article III power to adjudicate the very same crimes they have created. The Montesquieu ideal of a government of separated powers with checks and balances will simply die as an increasingly dependent electorate supports Democrat politicians who want to Get Things Done which translates in the English language to pandering to more dependent voters. The courts have traditionally granted unwarranted deference to bureaucratic fiats. There is little hope to be found among The Nine. The power of the purse in the House of Representatives will not avail. The House of Representatives will be virtually powerless to stop bureaucratic tyranny.

Whatever indirect control that would exist in the Senate over appointments to the bureaucracy will be abdicated as Democrats regain control of the Senate within the next two or three cycles. Meanwhile, recent history tells us that lack of unity by Senate Republicans means the Democrats can combine with Mavericks to confirm their appointments. There is simply no stomach in the Senate to resist even extreme radical leftists in posts like Attorney General. There is virtually no hope that the appointment process will control the bureaucracy even considering the unlikely possibility that the Republicans now in the majority in the Senate might actually withhold all confirmations apart from defense appointments. There are too few senators like Ted Cruz to carry this strategy out. We have seen how the McCain/Graham/Ayotte fifth column operates. The media will simply pile on.

The obvious need not be belabored, the power of impeachment will be rendered obsolete by a recalcitrant Senate composed of Democrats and Rino Republicans. As always, they will be supported by a blatantly partisan media. Anyway, House leadership will not countenance articles of impeachment.

Conservatives and Republicans in the House of Representatives will have the power of the purse as its sole remaining lever to try to restrain a federal government governing against the people.

In other words if the Right can manage to hold the House of Representatives, the situation will look like the era of Obama post 2010 and if the House is lost the picture will resemble the era of Obama post 2008. If the House is lost to Republicans, the power of the purse disappears entirely; if Republicans can hold the House that power will sadly be even less effective in bringing a overweening government under control than it has been post 2010. The Republican House has simply not been able to reduce spending and certainly has not been able to curb executive excesses. We are contemplating dispiriting stages of increasing impotence for the House of Representatives and, by extension, for conservatism. It is easy to see an increasingly uncivil society with the American dream slipping irretrievably away.

To paint a pessimistic future even darker, this gloomy assessment is predicated on the assumption that the center will hold, that the citadel of the House of Representatives will not only remain Republican but remain unified and committed to some level of conservatism. These assumptions have been challenged by recent history. We saw the House turned over to the other party in 2006 and, even discounting such a possibility in the next few cycles, it is quite likely that the Republican majority will attrite as the Democrat money machine is able to pick off marginal Republican House seats. Other Members will simply be bought off with "honest" graft and by K Street. Republican leaders will behave in the mold of Speaker Boehner and talk conservative while they walk Rino. Even if the House remains nominally Republican for the foreseeable future, the power of the House of Representatives to shape the destiny of the country toward a decent society will inevitably diminish over time because the House acting alone does not have the tools even with the power of the purse. While the House acting alone does not possess the tools, the Senate does not have the heart.

But what about the last election when the people rose up and swept the Democrats out of control of the Senate, swept many of them out of the House of Representatives, swept them out of state houses, elected Republican governors in Maryland Massachusetts and Illinois of all places, is this not a shift in the national sentiment and does it not mean that Republicans, contrary to the above scenario, will be able to hold the Senate and will be able to elect a president in 2016? Does it not mean that conservatism retains its appeal for the majority of Americans? Wrong question. Wrong time horizon.

If you believe that demographics is destiny, Barack Obama is shaping our destiny by executive fiat. He is importing unknown millions of a dependent class who will eventually vote overwhelmingly Democrat. These voters will not be certified in time for the 2016 election but perhaps by 2020. What is clear is that at some not too distant point in the future, in time to gain power over the lives of your children and my grandchildren, perhaps ten million to twenty million new voters will be enrolled mostly on the Democrat side.

Obama believes that he is in a win-win position. Either the Republicans acquiesce in his power grabs or overreact and impeach him or shut down the government. To protest that it will be Obama himself who will have actually shut down the government is like a tree falling in an empty forest; the media will report it the other way. Either way, Obama, banking on support of the media, wins because he is eagerly courting both government shutdown and impeachment. After all, he has the historical examples of the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the reaction to the last government shutdown. Conventional wisdom holds that Republicans overreached in both examples. And Republican leadership has uncritically accepted conventional wisdom.

The Republicans just won a stunning election victory and their momentum should carry them on to exercising effective political power. Nothing could be more illustrative of the Republican malaise than their inability to mount a coherent response to Obama's usurpations even after the people so overwhelmingly elected them to do so. Rather than educating the public about Obama's shredding the Constitution and what that means in their daily lives, establishment Republican leaders admonish their own to avoid the "P" word and the "S"hutdown word. This in the wake of an election in which they undermined conservative candidates everywhere. Scarcely a word has been uttered by any Republican leader that would educate the public about the gravity of this assault on the Constitution by Barack Obama. After knowing for months that Obama's immigration diktat was coming, the Republicans mounted no sustained effort to convince the country that their liberty is at stake.

Beyond that, no evidence that the Republican leadership is endeavoring to connect the in-flood of untold millions of immigrants with lower wages, lost jobs, flooded emergency rooms, overcrowded schools, dangerous streets, higher taxes, terrorist infiltration and terrorist attacks, and bigger more bloated government. There is no effective coordinated attempt by the Republican leadership to tell the people why this is such a miscarriage of their liberty and a looting of their purse. Republican leadership has been lobotomized.

Instead of educating the country, the Republican establishment disparages Tea Party conservatives who would. If the Republicans can do no better now in the wake of such a stunning election victory, how will they behave when they inevitably lose future elections? Somewhere over the time horizon the chance of retrieving the country from the brink will be irretrievably lost. That day is probably closer than we think.

We are describing an inevitability arising out of demographics but there is another aphorism besides demographics is destiny: Culture trumps politics. Just as conservatives are being swamped by demographics so conservatives are clearly losing the culture war. The culture which shapes our politics has been co-opted by the left. It is not necessary to recount every institution which has been given over to leftism but, clearly, our universities and high schools, our eleemosynary institutions and foundations like Ford Rockefeller etc., Hollywood, public service unions and private sector unions, the media and many of our churches have all been infiltrated and are now dominated by the left. Most galling, in many cases left has contrived to force conservative taxpayers to involuntarily fund the indoctrinations of our children through their ubiquitous cultural domination.

Even if demographics inevitabilities were not about to swamp us, our elections are being lost in the culture and, therefore, there is no guarantee, indeed no reason to believe, that Republican victories, if they can somehow be had, will lead to conservative governance. Recent history, cultural realities and common sense rule out that assumption. Thus, we are moving to the conclusion that there is very little chance of long-term conservative governance in American national politics. More, even if Republicans are elected and nominally take control of the federal government, for example in 2016, there is very little reason to believe that they will govern as conservatives. Finally, once we get past the 2016 election and any Republican administration then elected, we are confronted with the dismal prospect of spending years in the political wilderness as we impotently watch the country disintegrate.

Why is the country in danger of disintegration? Even without Obama, the Democrat party has surrendered itself to Marxism so any subsequent Democrat presidents are likely to govern in the manner of Barack Obama and that implies an increasing level of tyranny. They will have his administration as a precedent for more usurpations. The capacity as well as the incentive of Republicans to protect us from tyranny is illusory.

But even without Democrats in control, the federal government is on automatic pilot toward a terrible fiscal reckoning with a national debt of approximately $18 trillion, unfunded liabilities probably well in excess of $100 million, incalculable trillions of dollars of derivative threats floating above Wall Street, a world economy in deflation mode with no one really understanding why, certainly no one at the Fed which has been unable to fix it. The country faces external threats from Islamic radicals, Russian thugs, and an expansionist and aggressive China. If we do nothing, events are likely to take over to our peril.

What to do? By all means we should strive to elect conservatives but over time we are unlikely to prevail because of demographics, culture, media and the infamous pusillanimity of Republican leadership. We are unlikely to win any elections and, even having won, unlikely to produce conservative governance. The solution clearly is not to be found in Washington. To continually seek the solution in Washington with the evidence of failure after failure is to deserve to be defined as "insane." Yet, if we don't act….

There is a solution outside of Washington in an arena untainted by many of the influences which render conservatives impotent in Washington and that, of course, is in our state legislatures where many conservatives hold sway and where the playing field is much more to our advantage. The Article V movement does offer a constitutionally authorized way to save the Republic. With the wave of Republican victories in state legislatures in the last election the odds of getting effective amendments through have been increased while the ability to derail unwise amendments has reached moral certainty. As a conservative I entertain a jaundiced view of the moral nature of man and I do not except state legislators from that judgment, I merely say that they will be corrupt in a different way from the national legislators, a way less dangerous than the corruption in those who hold so much power over every aspect of our lives in Washington.

The upside is certainly not guaranteed, it is a daunting task after all to convince three quarters of the states to ratify a change to the Constitution, but it is certainly more likely than reforming Washington. To line up three quarters of the states behind amendments that would actually change Washington procedurally where it counts, for example, in reining in the bureaucracy and the judiciary, is not an easy undertaking and probably would require some sort of national shock to overcome inertia but every day the likelihood of that shock increases.

We can either grab hold of the remedy supplied to us by the framers of the Constitution and embark on reforming our government according to conservative lines through the Article V process or we can passively watch the crackup.

We can use the Constitution to restore the Constitution.

[firebrand]

You don’t negotiate with terrorists and you don’t negotiate with Democrat criminals.

[firebrand]

You have to trade something for that. Something the Democrat criminals want.

DO NOT DO THIS!

[i_robot73]

You had that sitting on your desktop, just WAITING to post someday...didn’t ya? /s As usual, it is a pleasure to read your post(s).

>We can use the Constitution to restore the Constitution.

We have had the ability to restore/abolish and reshape our govt as we so wish. The Art V is but ONE possible path. It is the WILL we currently lack.

IMO, that which is so rotten to the foundation is best torn down and built again than patching here/there and hoping to stave off the next big storm.

[JesusIsLord]

Which category are you in?

My view is that if Article V would be enacted and amendments ratified by Congress and/or the States, those Amendments could prove even more detrimental toward Christians, Patriots and Conservatives - than our present treatment of the Constitution.

I believe that Conservatives and Patriots are in the minority when it comes to control of: government, banks, education, media, business, arts. How do we get control back from these areas - short of a revolutionary war?

It would seem that one course would be to bring like (Conservative and Patriot) groups together for the purpose of developing and implementing strategy to take control of the Republican party, fund a legal arm for bringing cases to the Supreme Court to challenge all past and present rulings, laws, policies that are unconstitutional.

Absent unity, money and a long-term strategy for taking back institutions that are owned and operated by our enemies, Article V or any other strategy will fail.

[nathanbedford]

Nathan Bedford's first Maxim of the American Constitution:

The Constitution has become so distorted in interpretation and application that it has become at best ineffective in protecting liberty and at worst an instrument inflicting tyranny.

Nathan Bedford's second Maxim of the American Constitution:

The American Constitution is being amended everyday without the consent of the governed.

In order to believe that a Convention of the States presents a greater threat to liberty than our current state of politics one must believe:

1. The Constitution is not being amended by three women in black robes +1 liberal in black robes +1 swing vote on a case by case basis.

2. The Constitution is not being amended at the caprice of the president by executive order.

3. The Constitution is not being amended at the caprice of the president when he chooses which laws he will "faithfully" execute.

4. The Constitution is not being amended daily by regulation done by an unaccountable bureaucracy.

5. The Constitution is not being amended by simply being ignored.

6. The Constitution is not being amended by international treaty.

7. The Constitution is not being amended by Executive Order creating treaty powers depriving citizens of liberty as codified in the Bill of Rights.

8. The Constitution is not being amended by international bureaucracies such as, UN, GATT, World Bank, etc.

9. The Constitution is not being amended by the Federal Reserve Bank without reference to the will of the people.

10. The federal government under our current "constitutional" regime has succeeded in containing the debt.

11. The national debt of the United States is sustainable and will not cause the American constitutional system and our economy to crash and with them our representative democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution, such of it as remains.

12. The Republican Party, presuming it gains a majority in the House and the Senate and gains the White House, will now do what is failed to do even under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and balance the budget, reduce the debt, stop regulating, reform the tax system, end crony capitalism, appoint judges who will not betray us and, finally, listen to the people.

13. That a runaway Convention of the States will occur, that it will persuade the delegates from conservative states, that it will be ratified by three quarters of the states' legislatures among whom conservatives control a majority, and the end result will somehow be worse than what we have now.

14. If we do nothing everything will be fine; if we keep doing what we have been doing everything will be fine; we have all the time in the world.

[Ken H]

Huh?

[JesusIsLord]

I love your "... one must believe:" list, which does a great job of listing the sources of assault on our Constitution.

The question remains: if a new/revised Constitution would emerge from a Convention of the States, what is to prevent the current powers-that-be from corrupting, twisting, using that new Constitution in the same way they corrupt and twist the current Constitution?

In any case, Christians, Conservatives and Patriots need to figure out how to unify and wrest power from our enemies. This will require money, a sustained strategy and unity. Ultimately, we need to control the major organs of society including - government, media, business, banks, education, etc., if we are to live under a true Constitutional Republic.